Joss Whedon's vampires on Buffy the Vampire Slayer had transformative faces and turned to dust on death for a few very specific reasons.
While vampire lore has permeated many aspects of pop culture through film and television,Buffy the Vampire Slayer presented the creature in two different ways: facial transformation and turning to dust upon death for specific reasons.
Joss Whedon's popular TV series branched off from the 1992 movie of the same name and aired in 1997, running for seven seasons until its series finale in 2003. The show starred Sarah Michelle Gellar in the titular role, and co-starred David Boreanaz, Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Stewart Green, and others. Joss Whedon has gone on to be associated with several other shows, includingFirefly,Dollhouse, and movies likeThe Cabin in the Woods and even lent his talents to the MCU withThe Avengers. As a showrunner and writer, Whedon made some specific decisions regarding his take on vampires, which remained the central monster of his series, despite Buffy contending with numerous other types of evil as she battled the forces of darkness on Sunnydale, California's Hellmouth.
Related: Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Every Event Teased In The Season 4 Finale
Though care was taken to keep some existing facets of vampire lore forBuffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon and his colleagues made a few changes to the classic monsters that edged them away fromDracula (even though he made an appearance in season 5) and other more stagnant tropes. In horror, the vampire is one of the most mutable and ever-changing, and has run the gamut between incredibly vicious and terrifying to played for laughs in movies and television likeWhat We Do In The Shadows. Despite being off the air for almost twenty years,Buffyhas endured as a prevalent feature in pop culture, and Whedon's changes to vampires have since become iconic, though he changed them up for surprisingly practical reasons.
Although a tedious process to secure the prosthetics that actors had to wear in order to shift into 'vamp-face', Whedon had his reasons for wanting vampires that looked like monsters instead of normal people. Other shows, such asTrue Blood, have done very little to differentiate between vampires and regular people; inTrue Blood, for example, the only real difference was the extending of fangs from normal to clicking down into sharpened versions of very human-looking canines. InBuffy the Vampire Slayer, a vampire's whole face changed from their natural state to a more monstrous one, with a bumpy forehead, different colored eyes, and a mouth full of sharp teeth.
Whedon chose to lean on this transformation to show a difference between a normal-looking person and a threat, and has commented that he felt a show that required the level of human on vampire violence asBuffydid would be a bit more palatable to audiences if they looked like monsters instead of regular people. If they looked normal, and there was little to no distinction, the idea of a high school girl killing them by stabbing them in the heart could be a little darker than he intended.
When Buffy stakes a vampire on the show, they turn to dust. This, along with their unique facial structure, has also become iconic, but it was for a very practical reason. Whedon has stated that he didn't want to explain all the random bodies that Buffy would leave lying around Sunnydale in the show's plot, and also it would take away from the budget to spend the crew's time cleaning up after every episode. The animations were refined over the course ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer's seven seasons, and even lent to some additional creativity as to how Buffy and the Scooby Gang actually dispatched their undead foes.
Next: What To Expect From The Buffy The Vampire Slayer Reboot
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Jack Wilhelmi is the horror features editor at Screen Rant, and has been with the site since 2019. He is a lifelong fan of the horror genre, and loves any excuse to discuss genre-related topics, since none of his friends dare challenge him in horror trivia. He has been published on the independent horror blog Morbidly Beautiful, and has covered major genre film festivals such as Cinepocalypse in Chicago. He has also served as a judge for the Ax Wound Film Festival.In his free time, he is a devoted dog dad to a high-spirited rescue pup named Peter Quill and enjoys volunteering with various animal rescue organizations. Jack likes to travel and explore dark tourism-related and other various haunted locations. He enjoys studying psychology, the paranormal, and will watch literally any schlocky B-movie on the planet for a laugh. Follow him on Twitter @JackMacabre or his dog on Instagram @quillthethrill.
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Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Why The Vampires Transform & Turn To Dust - Screen Rant
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